States get needed nurse aide waiver relief but workers’ fates uncertain

Skilled nursing providers in at least 15 states averted the loss of thousands of frontline workers Thursday, when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services let expire a blanket national waiver allowing the use of non-certified nurse aides.

Those states had been awarded new waivers through an application process, meaning they demonstrated testing backlogs or other delays that kept providers from converting a large share of temporary nurse aides into permanent certified nurse assistants.

There was a flurry of CMS approvals Wednesday and Thursday, with the agency telling McKnight’s Long-Term Care News that it had just one remaining state-level request pending. Of 651 individual nursing home waiver requests, the agency said 416 were covered under state waivers. The agency did not say how many of the others were granted.